Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (50 page)

“I
am close to UNICEF because I had received UN aid as a child when the Allies
landed in Holland. [She received assistance from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration, UNRRA, the precursor to UNICEF.] I think my first chocolate
bars were from them!

“I
was always grateful, but I didn’t do anything about it. I kept it to myself. I
really wasn’t charity-minded at all, like some stars. I wasn’t big on the
benefit circuit.”

Yet
in 1971, she was persuaded by impresario Alexander Cohen to join a host of
other celebrities in
A World of Love,
a
film whose sole purpose was to raise money for UNICEF.

“I
got a taste of just how many needy children there were all over the world from
doing that movie. It was astounding to me, the kind of thing I would avoid
knowing if I could! But once I learned that so many of the world’s helpless are
young, homeless, and hungry, I couldn’t forget it.”

After
her mother’s death, when Audrey realized the time was right for a real
commitment to the children of the world, she prayed for the strength to carry
out her mission. Always frail, she worried that traveling to remote corners of
the globe would tax her delicate constitution and prevent her from achieving
her goals. With Wolders solidly behind her, she decided she didn’t have any
choice but to sign on. “Robbie wanted me to go ahead, I know my mother
would have been proud, so I decided to forge ahead.”

Princess
Catherine Aga Khan, wife of UNICEF commissioner Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan,
remembers talking to Audrey at a UN reception in the mid-1980s. “She
didn’t want to take on more than she could handle, not out of fear of
overextending herself, but more because she didn’t want to let down the people
who were counting on her. I think most celebrities would gladly have lent their
name to the cause, but that would be it. Audrey, on the other hand, would not
lend her name unless she could also promise her full commitment. She talked to
me about it at length, and I could see she was really struggling with the
decision.

“As
a child, seeing suffering around her, that awakened her to compassion,”
the Princess said. “Instead of making her bitter, as it did some, it made
her generous, giving. The surprising thing is that she was like that with
everyone. Every gesture was gracious, even in the refugee camps of Somalia. She
was never trying to impress anyone. She was just like that, an angel.”

When
she traveled to remote and impoverished countries, she packed only jeans and
polo shirts. She and Wolders would do their best to sleep on the excruciatingly
long plane trips, to prepare for the grueling hours in the field, meeting with
the local care-givers and trying to greet as many children as they could. They
were fact finders as well as goodwill ambassadors, and Audrey often requested
detailed information about the countries to which she was sent.

“Do
you know how many street children there are in South America? All over the
world? Even in America? But especially in South America and India? It’s
something like one hundred million who live and die in the streets.
Contaminated water is the biggest killer of children. They die of dehydration
caused by diarrhea, which is caused. by them drinking the contaminated
water.”

“UNICEF’s
biggest challenge is to get clean water to children. Isn’t it shocking? In the
latter part of the twentieth century, there still isn’t clean water? We’re
trying, though. And I thank God now that I had this film career and that it
made me so well-known. Because it’s now clear to me the reason I got famous all
those years ago. It was to have this career, this new one. To be able to do
something—a small thing, really—to help people.”

During
her five years with UNICEF, Audrey became progressively more single-minded
about making a real difference in the lives she touched. Normally a fairly
patient person, Audrey bridled at the slowness with which wells were dug and
planting techniques introduced. She wanted to see immediate results. She wanted
to see lives saved. The magnitude of the UNICEF projects often prevented swift
action, yet after having witnessed the devastation, the waiting was intolerable
for Audrey.

She
relished in the concrete details of her work. During an interview for the book,
she regaled me with UNICEF’s accomplishments.

“Last
year we provided fifty-two million schoolbooks for Bangladesh, and in the last
eight years we have sunk two hundred fifty thousand tube wells. They are too
poor to have a proper sanitation system. For a hundred dollars you can pierce a
tube well and pump water. It’s all done by local labor, but we provide the
tubes, the pipes, and everything so that the water can be distributed with the
proper sanitation.”

She
had done intermittent work for UNICEF throughout the 1980s, but she didn’t make
a formal commitment to come on as ambassador-at-large until 1988.

“Robbie
encouraged me to make the connection a real one. `You’ve been auditioning for
this job your whole life,‘ he said. `It’s about time you make it official.’
There was a lot of truth to that. I came from a home—a mother—who taught me
first and foremost that I am secondary to other people. Service to others is
what gives us meaning for ourselves. In the motion picture business, it’s easy
to forget your ideals. But I got out of the business, didn’t do anything much
for a while, and had a lot of time to reflect on what I believed. It came down
to the fact that I honored in my heart what my mother taught me. It was time to
put it into action. It was time to say yes to UNICEF.”